This compendious five-disc set celebrates the art of the Alan
Berg Quartet; others are on their way from EMI. The composers
range chronologically from Haydn to Rihm and the compliers have
taken care to illuminate different facets of the ABQ’s repertoire.

The first disc
gives us Haydn, Hofstetter, Mozart and Beethoven. The Emperor
Quartet has profuse elegance, its incident explored with eloquent
control. The slow movement’s ritardandi are somewhat overdone
however. K499 receives a big, bristling reading, one that
strains at the leash and is in favour of outsize gestures.
I find elements in it taken to the point of remorselessness,
despite the technical finesse of the performances. Beethoven’s
Op.135 is altogether cut from superior cloth, a reading of
erudition and balance, of which the Lento assai is
just the most obvious example. Here we find the ABQ at their
best in an opening disc that charts a personalised and variable
course through the classical repertoire.

Disc two pursues the
Beethovenian theme with Op.59 No.1. Here the clarity of their
corporate vision is powerfully explored in a performance of intellectual
probity, instrumental assurance and nerveless intelligence. The
accommodation they reach with Beethoven goes beyond the incomplete
control they exercise in Haydn and Mozart. Mendelssohn’s A minor
Op.13 Quartet falls somewhere between these two poles; it could
be warmer tonally but it lacks for little in the sinew of its
direction.

The central selection
in this five-disc set is given over to Czech and Hungarian
music. I think we can deal with the Smetana E minor relatively
briefly. The bulked up recording almost implies a chamber
orchestra. Incision is thereby dented. In any case this is
a heavy-handed, serious-minded reading lacking in conviction.
Janáček’s Second Quartet is one of those smoothed-out
German performances you hear from time to time and they all
sound, as here, generic and co-opted to manicured pastures.
Better is the Bartók though for all the expressive weight
brought to bear one never feels the ABQ penetrating to the
heart of things. Here their intellectual reserve inhibits
full absorption of the cruder aspects of scoring, a trait
to be found in both the Janáček and the Bartók – both
composed in 1928 by the way.

After these disappointments
we find a mixed salad in disc four. The Ravel is rather like
their Smetana in many ways. It lacks precisely those Franco-Belgian
traits of wristiness and deftness of expression that the ABQ,
for all their other manifold virtues, rather lack. Bow weight
is consistently too strong. The Berg Lyric Suite should hardly
cause them problems – indeed this is an extrovert, probing
performance. But the greatest drama here is reserved for
Rihm, whose Fourth Quartet is partly moulded from Bartókian
and Bergian clay. The ABQ’s characteristically big sound is
ideally suited to the weight of the slow movement and the
juddering, skittering sonorities Rihm demands find performers
of total instrumental control. I should mention the abstract
beauty of the Stravinsky as well, eighty seconds in memoriam
Raoul Dufy.

The final disc
relocates to Vienna. Technically the Schubert D887 is beyond
reproach and its enormous length is charted with exceptional
control and unanimity of timbre and weight. The result is
a reading of perception and fastidious detailing, of matching
of vibratos and bow changes. What is sometimes missing is
the energising spark of freedom, a roughening of that immaculate
corporate meniscus in the interests of some extra vitality
and sense of spontaneity. To accompany the mighty quartet
is a trio of lighter things – Lanner (two waltzes) and Johann
Strauss I – in arrangements by Alexander Weinmann. Spirits
are appropriately high in these infectious performances.

I have to note
that I’m working from a booklet-free review copy so cannot
comment on the quality of that or on the tracking decisions
– eight tracks for a Haydn quartet for instance - or for particular
details of recording dates and locations. So far as I’m aware
though the Strauss and Lanner derive from CDC 7 54881-2 where
the ABQ were joined by some instrumental colleagues. The Janáček
was on CDC 5 55457-2 coupled with the companion quartet and
recorded in the Mozartsaal of the Konzerthaus in Vienna in
1993. Rihm’s Fourth was originally coupled with Schnittke’s
Fourth on CDC 7 54660-2, and recorded at the same location
as the Janáček in December 1990. The Smetana was coupled
with Dvořák’s Op.96 on CDC 7 54215-2, Mozart’s K499 on
CDC 7 49583-2. The Razumovsky Op.59 No.1 came out on CDS 7
54587-2 in a Beethoven box recorded live at the Mozartsaal
in 1989 and Op.135 did so similarly on CDS 7 54592-2. The
ABQ recorded all the Bartók quartets on CDS 7 47720-8. And
the Schubert was on CDC 7 49082-2. Haydn’s Emperor was on
one half of an Op.76 collection [556166-2 – one disc].

Admirers of the
quartet will know that EMI devoted a Twenty Fifth Anniversary
set to them. This included some duplication with some things
here – of the Lyric Suite, the second Janáček, the Rihm
and the Stravinsky.

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